The short man in the bow of the jon boat didn’t look the part.

He moved the fly rod in rhythmic sweeps, expertly laying the tiny bream bug on the water, first 4 inches to the right of a stump and then the same distance to the left of it. But instead of traditional fly casting attire, such as a vest and felt hat spangled with flies, he wore khaki pants and shirt with a matching khaki work cap. Black work shoes and a black belt completed the outfit of this skilled angler.

But instead of traditional fly casting attire, such as a vest and felt hat spangled with flies, he wore khaki pants and shirt with a matching khaki work cap. Black work shoes and a black belt completed the outfit of this skilled angler.

Although the image of that man in the little boat has lingered in my memory for some 70 years, it is nonetheless clear.

In fact, there are even subtle details about him that abide, like the watch pocket sewn into the khaki pants which held a gold pocket watch, the only type time piece he ever carried. The indelibility of this vision can be attributed to the fact that I was an impressionable pre-teen seated in the stern of that boat, and the man in its front was my father.

We spent many late afternoons fishing for bream in Dr. Davidson’s pond or at Warren’s lake.

I caught my share of the colorful bluegills with a cane pole on those early trips, and later with a fly rod of my own when we would alternate sculling for each other.

When we moved back to Mississippi, I reactivated my fly rod. I Wanted bluegill action after fly fishing for brook trout and rainbows in the western mountains. One day I was shocked to see an advertisement for Bar Nun poppers in a magazine. This cork bodied bug was the favorite of my father, who had died 15 years earlier. I had assumed the old Bar Nun had probably been discontinued long ago.

I was elated that the popper was still being made and an acquaintance told me that Bill Sanders kept Bar Nuns in stock at his gun shop in Meridian. The Bar Nun popper got its name from Barrett Nunnery, the company that made and sold the poppers.

In Bill Sanders’ shop, he told me to look behind some merchandise on a certain shelf and I found them there enclosed in cardboard boxes with different numbers printed on the outside. “Do they still make the silver bodied ones with green hatching,” I asked Bill, holding out little hope. “I don’t know,” Bill answered. “Take a look for yourself.”

One box was labeled “style number 38.” When I opened it, there they were. Rows of the old fly I knew so well in my youth. I bought a handful.

In the early 1950s, Gene Nunnery determined that the bream bugs of his day needed reshaping. The cork bodies should be slimmer. He designed some and sent the prototypes to Falls Bait Co. to produce them to his liking. Barrett Nunnery Hardware had the cards, on which each dozen flies were displayed, printed at Dement Printing Co. in Meridian. The cards were sent to Falls which shipped large quantities of the final product back to Barrett Nunnery Hardware where they were distributed to retail hardware stores within a 125-mile radius of Meridian. In those early days, hardware stores were where one bought fishing tackle as there were no specialty tackle shops or large discount stores.

The right to produce and distribute the Bar Nun Popper was eventually sold to the Gaines Co. in Pennsylvania.

I felt considerable nostalgia as I tied a clinch knot in the four-pound test leader and pulled it tight against the hook eye of the colorful silver and green bug with its black and yellow tail. I let the little cork and feather fly dangle for a moment, its threadlike white rubber legs shimmering in the morning light. Then I pulled the fly line in large loops from my dad’s old South Bend OrenoMatic reel, the one he bought in 1941, and whipped the rod fore and aft, false casting to gain distance. Finally the little popper sailed out over the pond and dropped to rest on the water.

Several casts later the familiar “smack” of a bluegill prompted me to lift the rod tip and set the hook. Round and round the little fish went, pulling sideways as bream do, and coming at last to surrender at my feet. I chuckled at the little fellow’s zeal. He had a considerable mouth full of the popping bug, it being almost too big for his bite.

My mind’s eye saw a thousand of his kind from a time many, many years ago not only on my fly line but on my father’s line as well. I glanced ahead as I released the colorful little fish to his familiar home water. For a moment I saw my dad there in the old wooden boat’s bow, in the middle of making a roll cast to move his silver popper from one side of a stickup to the other

The years quickly erased that vision, but the one in my mind’s eye was as clear as spring water. And the look on Dad’s face was expectant, likely stemming from his waiting for my response to some fishing speculation.

The little silver and green insect had taken me back to a time when fishing for me was simple;…simply wonderful.